Boston dropout rings up a perfect score

Youth excels on GED examination

Alex Quince, 18, is the second student ever in the GED Plus program to get a perfect score on the reading part of the test. (DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF)

Sixteen was a long year for Alex Quince.

A quiet teenager making A's and B's, he ran away from home, dropped out of school, and tried everything from marijuana to heroin. He struggled with his sexual orientation. When his mother called his cellphone, sick with worry, he responded with a text message.

"I'm gay," it said. "I'm not coming home."

Now 18, Quince will graduate tonight from the GED Plus program after earning a perfect score on the reading section of the GED test. He plans to study photography and business this fall at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

"We've had about 200 graduates since we started, and [Quince] is the second one" to receive a perfect score, said Kathy Kihanya, director of the program, which began in Boston 11 years ago and tonight will graduate 30 students.

One-third of high school graduates nationwide are unable to pass the GED, Kihanya said, citing statistics from the national GED testing organization.

"I was surprised, but not that surprised" to do well on the GED, Quince said yesterday while in his grandmother's apartment in Roxbury, where he now lives.

The 18-year-old said he was "always in love with English class."

He keeps a green composition book in which he writes journal entries and poems. "The funny thing is, people always ask me, 'Did you go to school? Why?' And I'm like, 'Well, I enjoyed school.' I did want to finish high school."

Dropping out was not Quince's plan. The second oldest of eight children, he left his mother's home in Jamaica Plain when he was a sophomore at City on a Hill, a charter public school in Roxbury.

The decision was part spur-of-the-moment, part years in the making. Quince said he later realized he was jealous of the attention heaped on his six younger siblings. But, more importantly, Quince said, he was uncomfortable with his sexual identity and had yet to come out to his mother.

Both issues contributed to his frustration with his home life. After an explosive argument with his stepfather, Quince went to stay with a friend in Mission Hill.

He kept going to school, until the day he showed up to class "literally two minutes late" and, under the school's suspension policy, he explained, he had to call his parents.

That, he said, was out of the question. So he stayed with his friend, got a job at a Dunkin' Donuts, and, he said, did a lot of drugs.

Six months later, he had had enough.

" 'I'm a loser,' " Quince said he thought at the time. " 'I'm a failure, I'm not doing anything.' "

Tired of his new lifestyle, but not yet ready to come home, Quince entered a 45-day Department of Social Services program. He went back to live with his mother until he turned 18, made amends with his family, and then moved to Roxbury. He enrolled in GED Plus and easily passed the test this past spring.

Now, Quince works at J.P. Licks at Brigham Circle. He is excited to start college and, when his grandmother moves out of the apartment, claim the space for himself. He hopes to someday run a small business, maybe selling funny T-shirts, with his older sister.

With a photography degree, Quince said, "I could picture my own spokesmodels."

Maddie Hanna can be reached at mhanna@globe.com.